I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 10

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 10. One Blade

And he was one of Krash’s most bitter enemies.

That was also why Krash knew so much about him in detail.

He had once been Krash’s friend.

‘Friend, my ass.’

Krash had known it all along.

The reason he had remained Krash’s friend was because of his usefulness.

Balheim—the rival house that others might call Anyx’s opposite.

Displaying the leadership to embrace Krash, a direct heir of Balheim, would have been useful for standing at the center of the Kingdom faction.

And Krash also knew a far more repugnant reason than such a surface motive.

The incident happened after he graduated from the Academy.

Having joined the Starry Generation alongside him, Krash moved with Anyx to prevent World Erosion, and then it went wrong.

Anyx’s team fell into a trap laid by World Erosion.

All the team members died in the trap, and Krash barely survived clinging to the edge of a cliff.

And Anyx, true to the Starry Generation, was the only one to escape the trap.

‘Anyx! Pull me up!’

Krash felt as though his arms would be torn from his body by the intense gravity pulling from below.

So he called out to Anyx for help.

But what came back from Anyx was not aid, but something entirely different.

‘…Krash, if it becomes known that this trap happened because of my mistake, I’ll lose my place in the Starry Generation.’

Hearing those words, Krash’s eyes went wide.

Anyx had already been pushed to the margins of the Starry Generation because of a recent blunder.

If this mistake became known on top of that.

He would surely be cast out of the Starry Generation, just as he said.

The Starry Generation had become the center of power.

Being cast out from here was something to be avoided.

‘What nonsense is that?! Life is on the line right now!’

But wasn’t life the thing that mattered most above all else?

Yet Anyx’s expression remained unchanged.

He had made his decision long ago.

‘If I alone survive, all my mistakes will be buried with me.’

Anyx rose from his seat.

Then he began to walk away, leaving Krash trapped in the snare.

‘Anyx, Anyx, wait!’

Krash cried out desperately.

At this rate, he would die.

‘You fool! Did you really think things would go that smoothly!?’

The Starry Generation was no collection of fools.

Even before anything else, they were the sort to wage power struggles among themselves from within.

Surely they would use this incident as a pretext to cast Anyx out in some way.

He was one of the central pillars of Staron, after all.

Anyx would not be unaware of this either.

Yet Anyx let slip a laugh tinged with self-mockery.

‘It’s fine. You’re here, aren’t you? Krash.’

Krash’s eyes began to widen gradually.

Because he had grasped what Anyx was thinking.

Anyx was going to take this mistake upon himself.

That some half-wit from Balheim had grabbed his ankle, causing him to fall into the trap.

Krash already had plenty of enemies within the Starry Generation.

They would set aside the facts entirely and rush to expose Krash’s blunder.

In the chaos, the truth would dissolve into obscurity.

‘Thank you, Krash. For being my friend until the very end.’

Anyx’s last words were like touching Krash’s most sensitive nerve.

‘Friend? Friend!? What nonsense are you spouting! When have you ever thought of me as a friend!?’

He had long known how meaningless the word “friend” was in Anyx’s mouth.

Yet despite that, Krash wanted to believe.

That the man was at least a comrade fighting against the World Erosion.

But to Anyx, Krash was not even a comrade, much less a friend.

Krash, overcome with revulsion, finally touched Anyx’s raw nerve.

‘You made excuses, but the only reason you were ever at my side was because of Charlotte!’

For the first time, Anyx’s composed expression crumbled.

‘You think I didn’t notice your mistake today? The moment you heard Charlotte was holding her wedding, you lost your mind — and look what you’ve done!’

Anyx harbored a conflicted love-and-hate toward Charlotte.

Every mistake he’d made today stemmed from losing his composure the instant he’d learned of her wedding.

Krash had told him not to come in the first place.

The look of him had screamed trouble — nine times out of ten, he’d cause a disaster.

And yet he’d forced his way out of the World Erosion anyway, creating this catastrophe.

Now he was trying to pin it all on Krash.

It was infuriating — sickening beyond words.

‘That’s exactly why I can’t stand you.’

Anyx’s face was a mess of tangled, warring emotions.

‘You have no real power, yet you see straight through people. And you’re always poking at those wounds of mine.’

The real reason Anyx had kept Krash as a friend.

It was simple: Charlotte often came to visit Krash, and being at his side meant Anyx could see her.

But that was over now.

She was gone for good.

‘Still, at least one good thing came out of today.’

As he spoke, a twisted smile spread across Anyx’s face — a sick blend of love and hatred.

‘Charlotte wouldn’t want to hold her brother’s funeral and wedding on the same day.’
‘You sick bastard!’

Krash screamed, realizing Anyx had completely fallen apart — but Anyx had already turned and walked away.

‘At least you were useful in the end. Thank you for that, Krash.’

And with that, Anyx left.

All Krash could do was hurl curses after him.

It was then, when Krash stood on the precipice of death itself.

That someone came to save him.

A figure with platinum hair that gleamed like the rising sun.

Arthur Gramalte.

It was the beginning of a new and bitter entanglement.

‘Damned bastard.’

After that, Anyx was driven out of the Starry Generation by Arthur’s testimony.

And some time later, watching him grasp at straws by marrying Princess Claudia, who had no claim to the throne, was truly revolting.

“He speaks and carries himself so much like Charlotte.”

In that moment, words spilled from the present Anyx’s lips.

This fool had nothing but Charlotte on his mind even then.

“Hey.”

So Krash fixed Anyx with a glare and flexed his fists.

“Don’t go around calling my sister’s name so carelessly.”

Anyx’s eyes widened.

Krash’s reaction was utterly unexpected.

“And you said I resembled her.”

In the same instant, Aura began to surge from Krash’s fists.

Anyx stood motionless, watching the Aura that reached Expert Beginner level.

“I resemble my sister too, so I won’t let anyone who touches me get away with it.”

Krash kicked off the ground and launched himself upward.

In an instant, Krash closed the distance and drove his fist forward with the force of an avalanche.

Crack!

His fist was stopped by a Wooden Branch that shot out from behind Anyx’s back.

The sudden eruption of wood might have caught another off guard, but Krash was well accustomed to it.

Thwack!

Then he immediately swung his legs toward Anyx.

But once again, wood erupted between the railings, coiled around Krash’s leg, and hurled him away.

In an instant, Krash found himself suspended in the air.

The trees attacked, extending their branches toward him.

Between the branches sprawling in all directions to capture Krash—

Krash threaded through them with acrobatic grace and landed on the ground.

“Master Krash, you move like a flying squirrel.”

Behind him, Bianca, who had been watching quietly, spoke with wonder in her voice.

Peace indeed.

“Hah.”

In contrast, Krash wiped away the sweat beads lightly.

Grayza’s Family Secret Technique still rankled him.

“Just this much? You might as well use a weapon instead.”

Between the wooden branches wrapped around him like armor, Anyx’s smile flickered faintly.

Grayza’s Family Secret Technique.

The Wood Heaven Style.

Grayza’s secret art—which commanded not merely wood but all manner of plants with fluid mastery—was an unusual technique that infused the plants themselves with Aura to strengthen them.

Of course, its power was said to wane in places where plants could not grow.

A skill contracted with a god rendered that weakness meaningless.

‘Recovery.’

In simple terms: regeneration.

In any place whatsoever, plants bloomed at the command of Anyx’s skill, becoming his hands and feet.

That was the true reason he had been able to join the Starry Generation.

“You told me to use a weapon.”

Krash flashed Anyx a chill smile and withdrew something he had hidden behind his back.

For the first time, Anyx’s eyes twitched at the sight.

What lay in Krash’s grip was a wooden branch.

And that branch was none other than one torn from Anyx’s own tree.

Krash had stolen the branch using the Black Hood.

“Your wood is rather serviceable.”

Krash assumed a sword stance with the long wooden branch—as long as a longsword.

At that, Anyx let slip a hollow laugh.

“I’m not sure what you think you can do with that.”

Though Anyx spoke thus, his twisted grin betrayed genuine displeasure.

“Then let’s see what you can do with mine.”

In that moment, wooden branches erupted from behind Anyx.

Infused with Aura, the branches had hardened into awl-like forms, dense enough to pierce even marble flooring.

Between that rain of wooden spikes, Krash moved with unfettered grace.

The wooden spikes poured down as though without intent, yet Anyx controlled every single one of them.

Krash—who had clung to Anyx’s side like a burr during their Starry Generation days.

Even now, that old habit of Anyx’s remained unchanged.

In a sense, Krash was like a natural predator to Anyx.

No one knew Anyx better than Krash did.

“What?”

As Krash evaded all the wooden spikes and gradually drew closer, Anyx’s expression shifted to bewilderment.

Krash moved as though he knew exactly where every attack would come from.

Yet even so, Anyx detected no overwhelming momentum from him.

The aura emanating from him was at best that of an ordinary person.

‘It feels like he’s squeezing the last drop from his limits.’

Even now, Krash was laboring for breath as he evaded the wooden spikes, as though it took everything he had.

His mind knew, but his body couldn’t keep up—living proof of that struggle.

‘Did he awaken the Divine Eye?’

Anyx recalled the legendary Divine Eye, but he soon scoffed inwardly.

‘Charlotte perhaps, but not him.’

A man who’d awakened something like that would never be called Balheim’s half-wit.

“Anyx.”

And somewhere among the wooden spikes, at a distance now negligible, Krash’s voice carried a sneer.

“Still thinking about Charlotte?”

Twitch—

Anyx’s eyebrow twitched.

Those words had struck the inverse scale buried deep within him.

“…I’ve let you off easy enough times.”

Anyx raised his hand, and with those final words.

“I think you need to work on that mouth of yours.”

Then, through his palm, a power distinct from his Aura began to seep forth.

The tree behind him suddenly burst forth with tens of thousands of leaves.

Massive roots tore through the marble floor, laid bare at last.

Upon a tree of such overwhelming scale—one that might rightly be called the World Tree—

What resembled a human form had taken the shape of two massive arms.

The Wood Heaven Style.

Fifth Form.

The Wood Heaven Giant.

A colossus born from the Wood Heaven Style, passed down through the generations of the Grayza family.

The shadow cast by the giant flooded the terrace of Ara Dragon Manor.

“You’d do well to be more careful next time.”

Beneath that enormous fist—the kind that would make an ordinary person collapse without thinking—

Anyx spoke those words to Krash as though pronouncing an end, then drew his hand downward.

In the next instant, a fist of that immense magnitude came hurtling down toward Krash.

“Anyx!”

Elfin, Anyx’s subordinate, burst through the terrace door and cried out—a moment too late.

If Krash took that blow head-on, there would be no recovery.

But it was already too late.

The fist—vast enough to bring down Ara Dragon Manor itself—had already closed to mere inches from Krash’s face.

Facing that fist, Krash raised the Wooden Branch above his head.

In the secret library of Cheong Song Manor, there exists one volume of Secret Technique Manual—the thinnest of them all.

The reason for its thinness was simple.

The man who authored it had created only a single secret technique during his entire lifetime.

A half-wit of Balheim, talented in nothing whatsoever.

Because he lacked talent, he devoted himself to only one fundamental principle of the sword, and spent his life repeating a single Downward Strike.

A pure Downward Strike, without any technique or embellishment.

He swung his sword in that stroke hundreds of times, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, until the numbers exceeded a million.

When his life had surpassed eighty years.

The sword he had struck with shattered.

The blade that had borne his strike could endure no longer.

But by that point, he no longer needed a sword.

The sword had become him, and he had become the sword.

In one thing alone.

In the Downward Strike, he had reached the pinnacle of swordsmanship known as Sword-Body Unity.

On that day, there was no one in the entire world who could withstand his Downward Strike.

The Secret Technique Manual he had written at the very end of his life contained only one simple technique: the Downward Strike.

Yet despite the brevity of the manual, the secret technique inscribed within represented a realm utterly unreachable by any short span of martial study.

Krash lifted the Wooden Branch, and his eyes fell closed in perfect stillness.

All sound and presence around him faded away.

He focused his mind entirely on the single Wooden Branch held in his grip.

This secret technique demanded a level of concentration so profound.

The kind of concentration that required nothing less than the state of Unity of Self and Object.

Most would find it impossible to learn such a secret technique, manual or not.

But Krash was different.

Countless times, the curse that had plagued him forced him into a state that mimicked Unity of Self and Object.

Ironically, because of this, Krash could peer into his own inner depths better than anyone.

An empty inner self—there was nothing within.

How could there be otherwise?

He had accomplished nothing of his own.

But because of that very emptiness.

Krash could hold his ancestor’s secret technique within himself.

The sword becomes me, and I become the sword.

A truth of absolute simplicity.

Crack!

The Wood Heaven Giant crumbled, and a thunderous sound echoed across the terrace.

“What—what is this? What’s happening?”
“Is something wrong outside?”

The commotion from within grew louder at the massive noise.

But the dust raised by the collapse of the Wood Heaven Giant billowed up so thickly that the nobles inside could see nothing of what had occurred.

Within that haze, Anyx stood with wide eyes fixed forward.

The Wood Heaven Giant—the Family Secret Technique that contained Recovery.

Such a technique had been utterly shattered by a single Downward Strike.

The problem was whether he could block that Downward Strike even if he poured everything he had into it.

“You.”

In that moment, Krash’s voice rang out through the dust.

Anyx flinched at that voice, stepping backward without thinking.

“……Ugh.”

But shame flooded through him at the realization that he’d stumbled back merely at the sound of Krash’s voice.

Yet despite what his mind insisted, his body remained rigid with tension.

Cold sweat beaded across the small of his back.

His throat worked as he swallowed hard.

Until the dust cleared.

Anyx couldn’t so much as twitch, locked in that suffocating tension.

Then, through the haze of dust, Krash’s figure gradually came into view.

He cast the shattered Wooden Sword to the ground with a dull thud and opened his mouth.

“Don’t get smart with me again.”

It was exactly the sort of thing he would say.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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